“Are they coming to Natchez?”
Jamie nods. “The brothers are. The dad’s sick, apparently. They should be here late tonight. Early tomorrow morning at the latest.”
“This is going to be so bad. She may die, Jamie.”
His face goes pale. “What?”
“It has to do with the type of acid. It screws up your calcium and causes potentially fatal systemic problems.”
“Oh . . . fuck, man.”
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. Look, I need to get going.”
I start to leave, but Jamie appears to be in shock. He’s shaking his head like I’ve just told him the world is about to end.
“Keisha’s special,” he says. “You know? Fearless. Pure. Somebody’s going to pay for hurting that girl, I’m telling you.”
“If they ever find out who did it.”
“I’m not talking about the cops.”
“Don’t talk crazy,” I tell him, echoing Kaiser.
“I’m not talking about myself. I mean her brothers.”
I shake my head. “That wouldn’t help Keisha any. But take it from me, as a former prosecutor. Relatives swear they’re going to kill the perps in these situations all the time, but they almost never do.”
“Really? Why is that?”
The fifteen years of difference between the newspaper editor and me suddenly seems an eternity. “Because the terrible truth is, all anyone accomplishes by doing that is getting himself sent to prison. I’ve seen it happen.”
Jamie thinks about this. “Well. I hope that’s enough to settle the Harvin brothers down. But I wouldn’t count on it. Are you coming back later?”
“I’ll be back. You keep your eyes open, Jamie. Your name’s on the website, too.”
The editor nods, then sets off again, slowly meandering toward the hospital entrance.
Climbing into my Audi, I start the engine, then switch on the AC and sit with my face near the central vents until my skin feels cold.
Will Keisha Harvin ever feel that again? I wonder.
Closing my eyes, I reach out and turn on the CD player by touch. Soon the cabin fills with “Capriccio Primo,” a solo cello piece played to perfection by Elinor Frey. As she bows the heavy strings, my pulse slows and my blood pressure falls. But deep within me, something like a motor has begun spooling up. I recognize the feeling now, from the day I heard Caitlin speaking from the grave, on the last recording she made before she died.
The day I killed Forrest Knox.
As the end of the piece approaches, I open my eyes, reset the track, and put the car in reverse. Don’t talk crazy, I told Jamie Lewis. But giving advice is a lot easier than taking it. Sometimes to move forward, we have to go back first.
I’m parked outside the Kuntry Kafé, the seedy diner where last December I confronted Randall Regan, who after our conversation ambushed me in the restroom. I don’t remember driving here. I do remember crossing the river, looking down at the muddy, majestic current of the Mississippi moving slowly toward Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and finally the great dead zone in the Gulf that lies off the mouth of America’s largest sewage canal. The warm spring sun made the river look red, and the ethereal cello coming from my speakers held my darker thoughts at bay as I rolled over the bumpy span joining Mississippi and Louisiana.
Unlike the stylish villains’ lairs portrayed in Hollywood thrillers, the dens of some of the most evil men in the world are surprisingly mundane. Carlos Marcello, the Mafia don who ruled New Orleans for decades, regularly met his minions in the Morning Call Coffee Stand in Metairie, one table away from silver-haired matrons having their morning café au lait. In the 1960s, the Double Eagle group met daily in the little restaurant of the Shamrock Motel in Vidalia. And according to John Kaiser, some of the old Double Eagle members still hang out in the Kuntry Kafé, which is the dining appendage of the Kuntry Inn, and not far from the old Shamrock. The diner is clearly a cousin of its predecessor, but it’s a dump, stinking of grease and sour milk.
I wonder if there are still Christmas bells hanging from the door . . .
If I were prudent, I would have asked Tim Weathers to meet me here, or Kirk Boisseau. But if they were here, they would limit my options. Unlocking my glove box, I take out the Springfield nine millimeter I keep there and shove it into my waistband, then pull out my shirttail so it hangs over the butt. With this addition I feel less naked than I would have with only the .38 on my ankle.
Five more seconds of the cello sets me up just right.
With the cooling fan of my Audi still running, I get out and walk up to the glass door. The diner is mostly empty, but three old men and a long-haired blond kid sit mumbling over mugs of beer at the back table. One of the men is Will Devine. They look up as I yank open the door, but they say nothing. As I move toward them, the blond kid stands and squares up to me like he means to fight. My shirttail still hangs over the butt of my Springfield, but I figure the old men at the table picked out the concealed weapons within two seconds of seeing me.
“Look here, boys,” says one of the white-haired men, a wiry old guy who reminds me of the deceased Sonny Thornfield. “We got the mayor of Natchez paying us a visit. To what do we owe the honor, Mayor?”
Earl Tarver, says the lawyer in my mind. Double Eagle, born 1936. Which makes him sixty-nine years old . . .
“Yeah,” says another man with a grin. My memory offers up a second name: Buddy Garland.
Will Devine says nothing. He’s staring down into his beer mug.
“I think he’s come over for an ass-whippin’,” says the blond kid, who is two inches shorter than I but has twenty years of youth to his advantage. With his light blue eyes, he looks like a recruiting poster for the Hitler Jugend.
Earl Tarver’s eyes travel up and down my body, then settle on my face. “Ease up, Alois. You don’t want to tangle with the mayor today. He’s got his dander up.”
“Like I give a fuck.”
“Look at his hands,” Tarver said.
I don’t look, but I can feel my hands quivering.
“Sit down, Alois,” Tarver commands.
The boy reluctantly obeys, his eyes electric with hatred.
“What you want, Mayor?” Tarver asks. “Where’s your buddy, the FBI agent?”
When I don’t answer, Tarver says, “That Kaiser got his nose rubbed in it by his boss, didn’t he? After that fuckup at the Concordia jail back in December, I ain’t surprised. I believe he told the Justice boys in Washington that Sonny was about to bust open every unsolved case left over from the Klan years. And then”—Tarver snaps his fingers with a pop—“Sonny went and hung hisself. Ain’t that somethin’? Couldn’t stand the guilt, I reckon. Turning traitor will do that to a man.”
I look slowly around the café. The only other patron is a thin, pale-skinned man in a booth in the back corner. He has black hair and he’s wearing a leather jacket with the letters VK visible on the arm I can see.
“I’m here because somebody threw acid in a young woman’s face today,” I say, my eyes still on the biker. “Blinded her.”
Nobody at the table looks surprised.
“Is that right?” asks Tarver. “What girl was that?”
“Nigger gal, I heard,” says Garland. “Nosy gal who worked for the Natchez paper.”
“That really why you’re here?” Tarver asked. “You running interference for the colored now? That what they pay the mayor for on your side of the river?”
I fix my eyes on Tarver’s. “Your old boss killed somebody that meant a lot to me.”
He sniffs and looks at his compatriots. “I think he’s talking about that newspaper publisher.”
Garland snorts a laugh and ducks his head in agreement, a grin on his face. “His old lady, Earl.”
“I heard a nigger done that, too,” Tarver goes on. “A poacher from down in Lusahatcha County. Found him dead behind a crack house in Baton Rouge, didn’t they?”
Garland lifts his mug and drains half the
beer in it. “Yup. One less to worry about.”
While these comments ricochet around my neurons, I draw the Springfield from my belt, pull back the slide, and lay the barrel against the comedian’s temple.
“Say that again, Mr. Garland.”
Devine’s chair scrapes the floor as he shoves back from the table and gets to his feet, wheezing from the effort. The kid looks like he wants to jump me, but Tarver just laughs and says, “Damn, I wish I had a camera.”
“I got one on my cell phone,” says the blond kid.
“Don’t worry, Buddy,” Tarver says calmly. “Cage won’t shoot. He’s the fuckin’ mayor.”
“Don’t do nothin’, Alois,” says the man with the pistol against his head. “Don’t touch your phone. Please.”
“He ain’t gonna shoot,” Tarver insists. “Take the picture, Alois. If we get a picture of this, Sheriff Dennis will have to throw him in jail. It’ll be front page news.”
As the blond kid digs into his pocket, the empirical reality of the situation finally registers in my brain. Tarver wants me to shoot. The life of the man at the end of my gun barrel means nothing when weighed against the prospect of me sitting on death row in Angola Penitentiary—which is where I’ll wind up if I kill a man on this side of the river.
As the blond kid holds up his cell phone, I lower the gun and take the empty chair at the table, concealing the gun below its Formica surface.
“I came over here to tell you guys something,” I say softly.
“What you waitin’ for?” asks Tarver.
“Snake sent me a message about three weeks back. Through a biker. He said, ‘Wives and children have no immunity.’”
The old man squints as though laboring to understand the words. “That don’t sound like Snake to me.”
“Yes, it does. It sounds like all you fuckers. I know you, Tarver. You’re the kind of backshooting coward that stands in the dark and executes a man who’s lying in a hospital bed, or throws a cup of acid into a young girl’s face. You’re the kind of shithead who kills an old lady who remembers being raped by you back when you could still get it up.”
Tarver’s head jerks at that, and his eyes fill with hatred.
“Oh, yeah,” I tell him. “I know all about that machine shop.”
Will Devine swallows audibly.
“But the thing is,” I go on, “guys like you and Snake, the ones who did the beatings and killings back in the sixties? You were nothing but pawns in the hands of the rich boys. White trash. Flunkies. In the grand scheme of things, you were only one cut above a nigger yourself. That’s why civil rights scared you so bad. You talked loud and wore your bedsheet proud, but if you ever really got out of line—or got ideas above your station—the boss in the big house would trim your wick so fast your head would spin.”
The blond kid looks like he’s about to have a stroke, but the truth of my words is written on the faces of the older men.
“My dad started as poor as every one of you,” I go on. “But he worked his way up and out. Now, sure, I’m the one living in the big house on the high side of the river. But I’ve never forgotten where I came from.”
I hear a siren in the distance. Did a cook in the back dial 911?
“Cops on the way,” says Alois, an edge in his voice.
“Just say your piece and get the fuck out,” Tarver mutters.
Sliding the Springfield from beneath the table, I lay it flat on the Formica in front of me, the barrel pointed at Tarver’s belly, my finger on the trigger.
“Back during the Civil War in Tennessee, there was a man named Jack Hinson. Came from Highland Scots stock. Hinson tried as hard as he could to stay out of the war. But one day, a Union patrol killed two of his sons, then had the heads mounted on Hinson’s gateposts. After that, Hinson had a special rifle made. Then he went to war against the Union army. He killed the lieutenant who murdered his boys first. But before he was through, he killed more than a hundred soldiers.”
The old men are watching me with rapt attention; this is the kind of story they would normally love.
“The point is, I come from Highland Scots stock on my mother’s side. And if the girl who got acid thrown in her face today had been my little girl . . . I wouldn’t have walked in here like I did. I wouldn’t have sat down to talk. I’d have walked in and shot you in the face.”
Tarver blinks slowly, appraising my words.
I look next at Garland, then Will Devine. The fat man looks afraid.
“Then I’d have shot these two. Center mass while they were still pissing themselves. And no jury within five miles of Natchez would convict me.”
The old men are watching Tarver now.
“Aren’t you the badass all of a sudden?” Tarver says softly.
“Why don’t you ask Forrest Knox that question?”
The old Double Eagle’s mouth drops open.
“Let me fuck him up, Earl,” says the blond kid. “Let me cut him.”
Suppressing the urge to smash the heavy Springfield against the kid’s skull, I stand and back slowly to the door. The siren is louder now.
“Remember what I said about my little girl. And make sure Snake gets the message.”
My last image is Will Devine’s face, white with fear, and behind it, the tall man in the leather jacket speaking into a cell phone. Reaching behind me, I open the door and walk swiftly to my car, then drive back up to the bridge over the Mississippi, the cello slowly pulling me earthward, stemming the tide of endorphins rushing through my blood and brain.
The man I was six months ago would never have done what I just did.
That man is dead now.
Maybe this is what it means to be born again.
Chapter 8
Two hundred miles from Natchez, just north of Sulphur, Louisiana, lay a thriving sod farm that ten years earlier had been a struggling horse farm. Being that Sulphur was one of the most polluted places in America, with twelve chemical plants pumping out toxic by-products twenty-four hours a day, the horses hadn’t done too well, so the owners had sold out to a nice fellow with a ponytail from Beaumont, Texas. That fellow was Lars Dempsey, founder of the VK motorcycle club.
Dempsey rarely brought club members to the sod farm, which he operated as a legitimate front business. When he did bring them, they weren’t allowed to ride their hogs in, or even to wear their jackets. This was because the fifty-nine-acre complex sometimes served as a storage and distribution depot for the VK’s meth and gun-running operations.
What had drawn Snake Knox to the sod farm was not only its relative isolation, but the fact that it had an airstrip. Parked out on that airstrip now was an Air Tractor crop duster, probably the least suspicious aircraft in the American South. Its tiny cockpit could hold only a pilot, which suited Snake down to the ground. If he had to make a quick getaway, he didn’t have to worry about taking anybody with him. And anywhere he flew between Texas and South Carolina—or even to Mexico—cops would assume he was only a crop duster ferrying his plane to a job.
Just now, though, Snake didn’t plan on flying anywhere.
He’d traveled a long way to get to this place, modest as it was; six different countries in eleven weeks, and none particularly enjoyable. Andorra had been the best of them, mainly because that had been the original emergency sanctuary set up by Forrest. Billy was still living there and grateful for every bit of luxury and security that Forrest’s planning had provided. But Snake had no intention of lolling around a French-Swiss tax haven with a bunch of expatriate millionaires. He’d actually felt happier when he was sneaking through Honduras on a third-rate fake passport bought in Mexico. For him, every place he’d been through had been but a waypoint on his journey back home.
The reason was simple: unfinished business.
That was why he was sitting on a tall kitchen stool in front of a mirror while Junelle Crick, one of the VK “mamas,” worked on him with an arsenal of beauty salon chemicals that smelled fouler than some of the poisons Sna
ke used to spray on summer cotton.
Well past fifty, Junelle sported fried blond hair, bright red lipstick, and dark blue eye shadow, and she had a Salem Menthol 100 perpetually hanging from her bottom lip. She had pendulous breasts, a flat butt, a round paunch, and wore stretch pants. Snake couldn’t have felt any more at home if he’d been in Vidalia.
Junelle had set a piece of poster board in front of the mirror so that Snake couldn’t see himself until she had finished her makeover. While she tortured his eyebrows with tweezers, Snake reflected on the past three months.
With epic daring he’d brought down an FBI jet loaded with evidence against the Double Eagles. Then, despite relentless pursuit by the FBI, he had held the gang together and silent. One of his most effective moves had been to kill Silas Groom and frame him for the downing of the jet. Groom’s death had shaken every living Eagle, each of whom had assumed that old Silas had been betraying the group by ratting to the FBI. Frank would have been proud of Snake for that one.
More impressive still, in the midst of a crackdown by Colonel Griffith Mackiever’s Louisiana State Police, Snake had managed to forge an alliance with one of the most feared and powerful motorcycle clubs in Texas and Louisiana. He’d done this by offering the VK access to Forrest’s network of corrupt cops and judges. Snake could only offer that protection because he’d salvaged and maintained enough of the Eagles’ meth trade to keep paying about a third of Forrest’s network. That had been a tough trick. The files discovered in Forrest’s Baton Rouge storage unit had resulted in several statewide investigations, some into district attorneys and judges. Snake had held on to a handful of DAs by blackmail rather than continued bribery, but all that mattered was he still had them.
Still, it was a dangerous game to play. The VK naturally wanted the name of every contact at once; so far Snake had managed to dole out a few at a time. But the endgame was inevitable. Once the bikers had all those precious contacts, they wouldn’t need him anymore.
Snake did have some genuine support within the VK ranks. Some of the older members treated him like a rock-and-roll star. The JFK story had obviously made the rounds, and this earned a lot of respect among the guys who remembered the 1960s.